Alankrita Srivastava’s Lipstick Under My Burkha looks at the lives of four women who live in Hawai manzil: Bua ji, who has forgotten her own name as no one calls her by that name anymore; Leela, who works in a neighbourhood beauty parlour and soon to be married; and two Muslim women – the young Rehana who works in her father’s tailoring shop by night, attends college, and aspires to fit in with her peers and sing in the college band, and the hard working salesgirl Shireen, who has a control-freak Saudi based husband. In a prelude of sorts we are introduced to all four protagonists in the first ten minutes. And as the narrative unfolds their stories too take off.

Shireen wants to assert her identity as a woman in a relationship where she is mostly dominated by unwanted pregnancies and pills brought upon by her husband. A talented salesgirl who is awarded by her employers, she is unable to tell her husband that she works and contributes to the family income. Very soon she finds out that her husband is unemployed and has a mistress. In the end as she confronts her husband with the truth that she has found out about his unemployed status and his cheating, to boot, and that she wishes to work full time, he rapes her brutally and dimisses off her claims by saying, “Just because you have earned a few rupees, don’t try to play the role of the husband in the relationship. You’re a wife; remain that way.”

The second story that touches your heart is that of the young wannabe Rehana, the college student who steals clothes from malls from the trial room smuggling them under her burkha in order to find acceptance in her peer group. She adores Miley Cyrus and in the secret confines of her room, hides the stolen stuff and posters of her idol and dances to the western songs otherwise forbidden in her conservative and claustrophobic house. Eventually – Spoiler alert! – the police trace and arrested her for theft.

The third story is that of Bua ji, who expresses her suppressed sexuality by reading racy novels and engaging in a sex chat every night with the swimming coach Jaspal, whom she fancies as her prince charming. As a counterpoint Shrivastav brings in the story of a fifty-five-year-old man who has recently been widowed and whose sister is looking for a bride for him of thirty five to forty years of age. The director tries to question the hypocrisy prevalent in Indian society and the difference in treatment for a man and a woman whose sexuality is determined by his/her gender. While a man’s sexuality is permissible at fifty years of age and even beyond, a woman of the same age must focus on her family and religion. So in the end Bua ji is discovered, punished, and thrown out of the house by her family. While the house and sweet shop are hers, and the family earns its living from both, the family finds it easy to throw her stuff out of the second floor and humiliate her publicly because she is a woman.

The fourth story is that of Leela, who is in love with a photographer and aspires to be an entrepreneur in partnership with her lover. She visits travel agencies and offers an innovative package for newlyweds on their honeymoon. She imagines her lover capturing their special moments as they pose for photographs, while she does the makeup for the woman. She is also not happy that her mother is planning to get her married off much against her desire. In the end she too is caught by her fiance and disowned by him.

All four women are punished for their forbidden desires. Shrivastava shows their unity in despair as they gather around in Rehana’s father’s shop and wordlessly share stories of their plight. There, Rehana reads the end of the racy novel which speaks of a happy end for the novel’s heroine, Rosie. While the director explores the secret lives of all four, nonetheless she withholds in granting them a definitive ending.

With much focus on sex and explicit scenes, the film needs more for it to be appreciated. One cannot talk about emancipation and only focus on sexuality. While it may be a key point in gender studies, I am not sure that this was the director’s goal. If it was, the film seem to yearn for more.

Shrivastava’s women are predictable as are their problems or predicaments, and you know where exactly they are going to end up. So the end does not really come as a surprise. It’s open-ended possibly because the director couldn’t find an ending or she was trying to make it as hopeful as possible.

Ratna Pathak Shah’s voice-over, as she reads a cheesy novella called Lipstick Dreams, dominates the film and the director tries to visualize the scenes accordingly. And it is a good effort if not a novel one. The use in the title of the burkha may have symbolic relevance, but it’s sure to offend.

I am not dismissive of the effort but a certain subtlety was definitely called for. And I find no reason for the brouhaha it has caused among the critics. It has offered me nothing new in terms of cinematic experience, and I am not sure that it has done the same for its audience. For all its explicit sexual imagery in the name of women empowerment and an attempt to intellectualise female sexuality, it has left me cold. But such an effort must be celebrated and the film does grow on you after a second and third viewing. The only saving grace for the film is performance, by all four of the protagonists, and the fact that it was a woman’s film out and out.

The mono-monikered Hong Kong writer-director-producer, Scud (born Danny Chan Wan-Cheung) has been making distinctive films for the past decade. His debut, City Without Baseball (2008), co-directed with Lawrence Lau, was based on stories of the Hong Kong baseball team, who also starred in the film. The entertaining film generated headlines for its extensive full male nudity, first on display during the opening credit shower sequence.

Scud’s sophomore effort was Permanent Residence (2009), his poignant, semi-autobiographical drama about Ivan (Sean Li), a gay man in love with his straight best friend, Windson (Osman Hung). Throughout the film there are several moving scenes of Ivan lying next to or embracing Windson, the love of his life, and basking in their bromance. That they will never be friends with benefits is a situation that causes Ivan tremendous heartbreak. Permanent Residence also features Scud’s emphasis on examining death, depression, suicide, and the afterlife, themes that were expanded upon in his later films, most notably Voyage (2013).

As Scud found his footing as a director – his background was in IT – he garnered international acclaim for his subsequent films, Amphetamine (2010) and Love Actually…Sucks (2011). These dramas depicted the pain of love as well as characters struggling with trauma, addiction, and depression. While playing the festival circuit, they helped establish Scud as a unique filmmaker of palpable emotions. He captured the speed and intensity of an unexpected if doomed affair in Amphetamine; the longing of a love not meant be in Permanent Residence; and a jaundiced view of romance in Love Actually… Sucks as six interwoven stories chronicled bad love affairs.

Scud’s films are stylish, glossy productions that showcase attractive actors expressing their passions and naked bodies in showers and bedrooms, on beaches and outdoors. His films are sexy, but they are not necessarily erotic. Despite the frequent full nudity, his emphasis is more of an expression of the character’s freedom. The characters often portray their emotions on their sleeves, since Scud focuses on unrequited love throughout all his work. His characters are obsessed with someone they cannot have, or a love that is forbidden in some way. What resonates is the yearning the characters and the audience feel.

His romantic dramas are engaging because his actors communicate their desires, longing, and heartbreak through their intimacy and intensity. Byron Pang, as the troubled lover in Amphetamine, and Haze Leung, as a despondent policeman in Love Actually…Sucks, are especially noteworthy discoveries.

Both actors appeared in Scud’s 2013 film Voyage, an anthology of short films, all thematically linked by depression. The stories range in length and content as a psychiatrist (Ryo van Kooten) reflects on his patients, including Yuan (Byron Pang) who goes off to inner Mongolia as part of the Chinese re-education program; Ming (Haze Leung), a mentally disabled young man; and Sebastian (Sebastian Castro), an artist romantically involved with a young woman in the Netherlands.

While Voyage contained many elements from the director’s earlier work – the uninhibited nudity and distressing romantic entanglements – the film specifically addresses suicide and the afterlife from multiple perspectives. Voyage received an Artistic Achievement Award at the Chicago International Film Festival, where Scud was honored back in 2013. The film is only now getting a U.S. release on DVD, along with all of his earlier films.

Scud has since released two more films, Utopians (2015), and Thirty Years of Adonis (2017). He chatted with Film International about Voyage, his experiences with depression, his admiration for his actors, and his penchant for full nudity.

Voyage is a change of pace for you in that while it has some queer content, it is not an overtly queer or homoerotic film, unlike much your earlier work. Was there a reason you shifted your focus away from sexuality?

Everybody thinks I have a purpose, but it’s just a story I want to tell. City Without Baseball was an accident. I was still living in Australia, and I thought about becoming a filmmaker. One of my colleagues in my IT career was in charge of the promotion of the Hong Kong baseball team, and he wanted me to do a documentary. I thought it was better to make it a drama. So I did. Permanent Residence was more of my own story, and I wanted to make that film because it was in my heart and mind for years. That helped me reduce my depression.

So every film I make happens because the story is compelling to tell. People think I’m doing this to promote sexual equality, but that’s not my purpose. I have no political reasons. I just wanted to tell a story. I made Voyage because of my own depression. Samaritans is a British organization for suicide prevention in Hong Kong, and people there thanked me for making the film. They showed it to their clients. The film helped prevent suicide.

Can you talk about your interest in depicting romantic trauma, suicide, and mental illness?

While I was making Amphetamine, I fell back into a wave of depression. It was a dark and sad movie, and I was sad making it. The character being raped by a few guys in a tunnel was a difficult scene to shoot, and my depression returned. After that I made Love Actually….Sucks!, and that was the end of my fantasy with love. That’s why I made the film, because for a long time I depended on passionate love to survive. I’m a very depressed person, and I tried to have some love to keep me going.

I am constantly standing on the edge of the cliff, and I could fall any time. But I want to live, so I tried to build some walls around me. I used to think that wall should be love and I tried that – but that’s the most unreliable wall on earth. If I leaned on that wall, I would fall. Now making films is my wall. That’s what keeps me going. As long as I have a project going on and have a story to tell, I will move on.

I had a bad experience making Amphetamine, despite the result. I like all of my films. Love Actually… Sucks! is one I like in particular. So I decided before I die, I should make a film about depression since I’m so well versed with it. I know my problems, and my friend’s problems, so I packaged them into a filmable format and made Voyage. All the stories were true stories.

What can you say about structuring Voyage as an anthology?

I make every film with the feeling it might be my last film. That’s always a possibility. Since it might be my last, I wanted to put as much as possible in it. For Voyage, everybody said I should tell one story and it would have a greater impact. Why dilute the impact with multiple stories? When I was writing Voyage, I just selected the stories I wanted to tell. I wanted to give different perspectives to depression. Voyage was the most difficult film for me to make. It took 3 years to shoot and because it was about depression, it brought me back to depression.

In Voyage, there is the story of the German lady, Leni. I met her when Amphetamine was screening in Berlin. She told me her story about the suicide of her mother, and if you recall that part of the film, after her mother died, her family was in a sad mood for years. She told me her story, and got her family to be in the film, too. Her father was her father, her sister was her sister, but we had a British actress playing her mother – since her mother wasn’t alive anymore. I wanted to present different places and time.

Voyage is your first film shot mostly in English and largely without dialogue. Can you discuss this decision?

It’s my first film in English because of the stories. Only the one with Ming is set in Hong Kong. The others are elsewhere in Asia and Europe. In all of my films, I let the actors speak their language at that time. Voyage was criticized for the English accents of my actors, but I made them speak as if they are in real life. The woman who plays the Filipino maid for Haze’s character can speak perfect English – better than I do. But I made her speak like a Filipino maid in Hong Kong. When audiences don’t hear what they are accustomed to, they think it’s a bad production. But I made them use their language as much as possible. I used English because they spoke in English. But they do speak English because they don’t know Cantonese. I’m trying to be realistic.

You work again with Haze Leung and Byron Pang, who you cast in key roles in earlier films. You also feature out actor-singer Sebastian Castro in Voyage. Can you talk about how you created roles for each actor?

Amphetamine

I think one thing that kept me going is that I have luck with actors. I come across these guys and girls who are devoted to my work. I’m in debt to them. When I make a film, I just tell the story, with no purpose, as I said. But I do want the film to be successful to do my actors justice. For me, I don’t fucking care. I have no regrets, but the people who work for me and give their all, they don’t get the return they deserve – the recognition and fame. It makes me not sleep well.

Haze happened to be my assistant director. He graduated from film school and is very educated. He was in charge of casting Love Actually...Sucks! There were many cast members in that film because it has six stories. When he showed me the choices, there was one role I didn’t say anything about. He realized I was not satisfied with who he found for me. He asked me out for a drink. He said he knew I wasn’t satisfied with the casting for the Policeman, and he asked if he could do it. I had to change the script. He was an evil policeman, so the tone changed because of his participation. I gave him the role of Ming in Voyage.

Byron is the best actor I can find in Hong Kong. He’s so natural. I have to say I feel in love with him while shooting him. I was touched when my cameraman on Amphetamine, who is a straight, said, “I will make love to Byron with my camera.” I think he did. After Amphetamine, I invited Byron to work on Love Actually…Sucks!, but he had to pass on that, so I made him do Voyage, which I think his best performance. It is deeper and better than Amphetamine.

I met Seb when Amphetamine screened in Chicago. He came forward to sit in the first row and asked me a question at the Q&A after the screening. I was impressed, and when we left, I handed him my card. He told me he was an aspiring actor but had a problem with nudity. Whenever someone tells me he has a problem with nudity, it becomes my objective to strip him bare. After that, he moved to the Philippines, and he made successful [music] videos. He asked me to make his first video, but I declined.

Of course, we have to talk about the nudity in the film. Why do you focus so much on skin?

It has to go back to City Without Baseball. Before that, there was no male nudity in Asian cinema. There wasn’t that much nudity in City Without Baseball but it caused so much controversy. A gay forum online had a powerful article that was critical of my employment of nudity in the film. But I watched European directors – Pier Paolo Pasolini, Peter Greenaway, and Pedro Almodóvar – and there was so much nudity in their films. Asians have problems with male nudity especially. It made me angry and defiant. So, in Permanent Residence, the two leading men were unclothed throughout the film. That film was praised and people don’t talk about my nudity anymore. After that, you see more gay films and sex scenes; it’s almost mainstream now.

A famous actress in Japan came to me and did an interview after seeing Voyage in Japan. When she saw the nude scene of people walking into the sea, she was shocked at first. But then she realized how powerful it was; if they were clothed, that scene would not have so much impact on her. The first shots of Amphetamine featured Kafka (Byron Pang) standing on the edge of a roof about to jump. He is wearing only angels wing. Normally, he would have his briefs on, but I convinced the actor to drop them. When he watched it, Byron told me he knows why I insisted on him being naked. It makes such a difference.

I reckon my insistence on full nudity is because I’m a purist. Butts, tits, and penises are integral parts of a body. What’s an alien piece of cloth got to do with it? I honestly only find completely naked men sexy.

What can you say about the elements of ghosts and the afterlife in Voyage?

Voyage is a very special film, even from the others I’ve made. It took on a life of its own while I was making it. It evolved, and “talked” to me during shooting. I usually don’t improvise much. But this film took three years to make, and I found myself shooting more scenes about the afterlife. From what began as a study on depression, it became a film about the afterlife too. For every story I shoot, I have wondered what happens to the guys after they die. I have to really think about what would happen after death – to them, and to me. Will I see family and friends again? I had a very unique visualization of someone after his death. This is becoming more a theme of my films, especially in Thirty Years of Adonis, which is about the afterlife.

You end Voyage with the statement, “Film is like life.” Can you discuss that observation?

I didn’t study film. I had an IT career, and my social circle was with artists. My friends weren’t surprised, but the rest of the world was stunned that an IT guy became a filmmaker. Film has taken over my life and it’s given me a cause for everything I do. I can now tell my friends that they no longer have to worry about my depression as I still have films I want to make. So I will try to stay alive for as long as possible. It’s my lifetime passion, and it saved my life, and became my life. I’m so happy with my imagination that I am not afraid of death anymore because I know how I’m going to die: on a film set. Probably sitting on a chair examining a shot and having a heart attack. If I had to take my life myself I would try to decide on such a way that the death will help my film.

Voyage will screen at 7:30pm, Friday, March 23 at Plays & Players as the Centerpiece Screening of Philadelphia’s QFLIX.

Gary M. Kramer writes about film for Salon, Cineaste, Gay City News, Philadelphia Gay News, The San Francisco Bay Times, and Film International. He is the author of Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews, and the co-editor of Directory of World Cinema: Argentina, Volumes 1 & 2.

Although, in retrospect, the stars seemed to align during the years of Jean Negulesco’s birth and death (1900-1993) for him to be tagged a Hollywood-Golden-Age director, the Romanian immigrant had little clue what his eventual career would be when he first set foot on American soil. This current biography, Jean Negulesco, Life and Timesby Michelangelo Capua (McFarland, 2017) recounts an interview the director once gave about his fortunes:

When I was 14 I knew already my vocation: politics are for the politicians, business trading left me indifferent, since I could not understand its mechanisms and did not like to study …. For this reason, I decided to leave my paternal house and go to Vienna because I wanted to be a painter. But World War I forced me to return home (4).

One doesn’t ordinarily think of film directing as a profession one stumbles into. And yet, in Negulesco’s case, stumbling ultimately seems to be the best explanation. But when he was a very young man, contrary to the wishes of his father who’d wanted him to go into business, through the distractions of history and World War I in particular, he’d decided to be a painter.

After some minor but significant artistic successes in Bucharest and Paris, and a marriage to wealthy American widow and mother Winifred Hayers Havelick, six years his senior, Negulesco set sail for America with his new family in 1926. With the financial help of his new wife (his first of two), he set up a studio in New York’s Greenwich Village. After his exhibitions received critical attention, Jean, Winifred, and her daughter moved to Washington, D.C., whereupon Jean sold paintings to, among others, Duncan Phillips, who’d started that city’s esteemed Phillips Collection.

Financial pressures and Negulesco’s extra-marital affairs eventually caused his and Winifred’s marriage to break up. Meanwhile, in the spring of 1930, Jean left Winifred in Washington, and made his way alone to California.

Capua is shrewd and discerning enough a biographer to let readers know early on that Jean Negulesco’s memoirs are often self-serving and, therefore, not always reliable. Frequently in this work, Capua therefore refers to works of others which dovetail or conflict with Negulesco’s own accounts to help us get to the truth.

Nonetheless, Capua cites one useful Negulesco reminiscence at length to help us understand how the filmmaker serendipitously moved from painting to directing. When he arrived in California, he managed to land exhibition space for his works which, in turn, led to his getting acquainted with Hollywood notables who subsequently commissioned him for portrait work.

As a result of his new-found popularity, Negulesco seemed the likely person to act as escort and translator for noted French art historian Élie Faure, who had just arrived in Los Angeles to deliver a series of lectures on art and cinema. As Negulesco recalled it, the meeting between the two men propelled his career switch from painting to film. Here’s how Faure advised him:

“Listen Jean, it’s possible that you are a great painter. It’s possible that you’re a genius. [But] why don’t you put aside the brush for a while? Maybe one day you’ll take it back? You have a foot inside the studios. You are friends with the studios’ biggest names. They will help you. This is the art of the future. This is the art that uses all other arts: dance. music, literature, etc. Look here at the beer. It’s lifeless, but if you point a camera here, the scene will have a certain rhythm, you walk with it, and inanimate objects become alive and the beer starts to dance.” (15)

At once amazed and appreciative, Negulesco then continued:

“(I’ve never forgot that. Every time I had a scene too static with a long conversation, I’d slowly move the camera from right to left, from left to right. It would create a rhythm in a scene, which otherwise would be dead.) I was so happy that someone whom I admired had told me ‘Quit painting.’ That night I put aside the brush. It took me 13 years to make my first film. But that period of my life had been amazing.” (15)

Inspired by this revelation, Negulesco was able to move deliberately and patiently through subsequent stages of his career. He became a sketch artist of sets, an assistant producer, screenwriter, and second unit director before becoming a full-fledged director.

At best, despite all acclaim and his many awards, he became a fine film technician or journeyman director. His acute visual sense of where to place objects and actors on the screen was unfailing – most conspicuously, in his work on cinemascope movies like How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). It was always clear, though, in Negulesco’s final productions, he never entirely shed his skin as a painter.

Humoresque (1946)

Yet, almost all of his movies now come off as sappy and over-sentimental, rank-and-file studio assignments – movies like Humoresque (1946), Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), The Rains of Ranchipur (1955), and A Certain Smile (1958). On viewing any of them now, we come away with the sense Negulesco and the films’ producers seem to be groveling for audience appeal and box-office ratings. In this context, the director’s work fit in during Hollywood’s Golden Age.

It speaks well of Michelangelo Capua that he maintains his enthusiasm for his subject without trying to inflate his ultimate stature as a filmmaker. Negulesco lacked the social-narrative gifts of, say, Sidney Lumet, the broad, humane outlook of William Wyler, or – to suggest a more contemporary comparison – the versatility of Steven Soderbergh. As Capua bluntly states, “He was certainly not the greatest or most individual of directors” (2). Still, if Negulesco’s contribution to cinema development indeed has been neglected by film historians, Capua has done more than a respectable job of prompting a reconsideration.

He includes enough first-person documentation from friends and colleagues to give us a sense of Negulesco’s gifts and shortcomings. And Capua’s writing is fine. Unfortunately, some shoddy editing detracts from what one can only hope is the first edition of this biography. Jean Negulesco, The Life and Films is rife with typos. The great actor Charles Bickford becomes “Charles Bickfors.” And when Negulesco is called to consult on a project to help set “international film standards,” the phrase readers are stuck with, instead, becomes “intentional film standards.”

But make no mistake. Capua’s biography of Jean Negulesco is an important piece of American film history about a neglected and underestimated director.

Louis J. Wasser is a freelance essayist and critic specializing in film, and classical music. He’s written extensively for The Washington Post, Washington Jewish Week, Identity Theory, and other publications. He’s also a financial copywriter.

]]>http://filmint.nu/?feed=rss2&p=236960Laughing at the Land of Oddz: Closurehttp://filmint.nu/?p=23781
http://filmint.nu/?p=23781#respondThu, 15 Feb 2018 00:30:05 +0000http://filmint.nu/?p=23781

By Elias Savada.

There have been plenty of movies that have skewered the sunbaked air of Los Angeles and the strange people who breathe it – Mick Jackson’s L.A. Story and Robert Altman’s The Player remain two of my favorites – but folks, if you find somewhere showing writer-director Alex Goldberg’s Closure following its world premiere at the DC Independent Film Festival on February 17th, you might want to catch this whimsical gem – and make room for its sardonically witty fish-out-of-Midwestern-water tale on the Hollywood-as-another-planet list. Even without the star-power of Steve Martin or Tim Robbins, Closure – Goldberg’s second feature as director, after the little seen 2003 comedy Today Will Be Yesterday Tomorrow – embraces the wacky Angelino lifestyle with a well selected cast of friends and family, and a well-disciplined screenplay that grabs you right of the gate at LAX, where star Catia Ojeda (also Goldberg’s spouse and muse) crashes into an alien landscape populated with oil derricks, dinosaurs, traffic (naturally), friendly-angry drivers, and a heavy dose of light-hearted dread.

As Nina, a 30-something taking a break from selling insurance in Kansas, Ojeda is in every scene in this tight, 90-minute examination of the superficiality of Los Angeles. Her low-key, gung-ho performance is a study of her character’s wide-eyed resourcefulness and focused determination, although her journey throughout La La Land, in search of her estranged sister, Carrie, offers a remarkably refreshing role to bolster her resume. If you recognize her at all, it’s probably for her recurring role in the Amazon Studios family fantasy series Just Add Magic. Co-stars Dee Wallace and Ellen Karsten also appear on that show.

Her wanderings around town take her to various “last known” whereabouts of her sister, and locals who know Carrie (but not where she currently is) often mistake Nina for her sibling – a lightly played running gag. Among the ditsy folks who cross her path, first is Carrie’s Valley Girl roommate Yasmina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson, a.k.a. Nadine Memphis on the USA Network series Shooter), a transcendent, New Age spirit who works as a dental hygienist…and a nude model. Their weird meet-and-greet offers up the bright, comic dialogue that Goldberg sprinkles throughout the film. He seems to have some interesting words for most of the cast, including Carrie’s polyamorous neighbors, writer Jack (John Sloan) and his food-blogging wife Prudence (Milena Govich), “proud members of the calorie restriction society.” Well, maybe she is, and maybe he’s not – to both the sexual and food proclivities. Even the police have their quirks, as evidenced by odd couple Detectives Franklin (James Andrew Walsh) and O’Leary (Michael McCartney), who reluctantly agree to help the out-of-towner.

As Closure blossoms into a grown-up Nancy Drew detective yarn, Nina sniffs about for clues among the fringes of the city, first at a club where Carrie worked on her relationships, and then into the darker side of the naked city. Nina doesn’t let California phase her, even after her bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, you-know-your-not-in-fucking-Kansas self manages to follow the yellow brick road into some nasty situations.

Aptly titled, Closure ends with just that, although in a very different way than you would expect. It’s still completely gratifying.

Whether poking fun at various social anxieties, which seem to affect anyone walking the streets of the city, or playing up the awkward comic moments that surround Nina’s extended romantic encounter with a real, sorta-solid guy (Tom Choi), Goldberg sets a fine tone to this dark comedy. Having toiled as a production assistant, actor, writer (and prolific playwright), he prepped his film – shot on a nano-budget over just 12 days – well. If you know the L.A. scene (Goldberg was actually born and raised in Washington DC and Northern Virginia), it’s easy to pepper anything about the area with frothy dialogue. I’ve always called L.A. “the other planet,” and if you’re from anywhere else in the world, watching Closure captures its zany eccentricities with a seriously comic cadence.

In the strange world of Hollywood distribution, there’s no telling when (not if) Closure will drop into an area theater or on a streaming service. In the meanwhile, you can read more about the film’s five-year journey on Goldberg’s blog here.

Russian-born and German-trained Alisa Berger shows off her experimental and artistic tendencies in The Astronaut’s Bodies, a graduation project for the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. Her first feature is a meditative family drama that extends its light story line (also by Berger) into juxtaposed threads surrounding a single parent and the children who suffer through his alcoholic abuse.

Michael (Lars Rudolph – a German actor who resembles a gaunt, older Steve Zahn) is the disheveled patriarch, finding any excuse to berate his children. He’s a unbathed slob, with hair as unruly as his bipolar manner. One of the few reminders of his unnamed spouse – whose absence probably led to his current depression – is a photo of her gazing out at the family from the middle of their small dining table. Teenagers Anton (Béla Gabor Lenz – who American audiences might recognize for a small role in the German-language Netflix series Dark) and his twin sister Linda (Zita Aretz) have just graduated from high school, with the boy having decided on a career as an astronaut. She’s unsure about her future, other than that she prefers to spend it away from a caustic home environment. Their 8-year-old sibling, Irene (Luzio Nadjafi) bears the brunt of the father’s belligerent, manipulative shenanigans.

Anton’s tale, speckled with oddball NASA footage, revolves about a medical study he has joined to examine the effects of one aspect of space travel. Scientists will be examining the atrophy of his legs while he remains in a horizontally position for 60 days. The physical stress alone puts all the subjects in the experiment to task, but there’s also the mental and emotional challenge. Anton only realizes he’s being observed after the pale, albino-ish assistant (Britta Thie) enters his room and replaces a piece of food he dropped on the floor. Wouldn’t such surveillance been in the agreement he would have signed before becoming a guinea pig? The camera is also very obvious in its bubble cover in the ceiling above his bed. So, maybe he’s not the smartest cookie in building, but he certainly has a passion for space.

Although it’s a group experiment, he’s alone in his bed except for a plush monkey dressed in space suit. As there’s little activity for him to embrace, the fascinating space travel stories his sisters provide him as audio files (they definitely share his enthusiasm) send his mind drifting in inner and outer space, as a sole astronaut heading for Earth, in just the kind of space suit his toy primate wears.

Meanwhile, Linda finds herself attracted to an older boy Patrick (Daniel Michel), while Irene remains at home with her manipulative, death-wish of a drunken dad. The film’s story arc follows each particular family member as they try to sort out where they are heading, with some interesting hooks, and some occasionally jarring edits, connecting one strand to the other, hoping to find some kind of inner peace in their intimate yet expansive family galaxy.

Early on, the discomforting hand-held camera of Bine Jankowski surrounds each cast member with immersive close-ups (wide shots appear to be limited to Anton’s space journeys, offering the usual planetary views). For Linda, you’ll get head shots as she applies her makeup and heads out looking for a connection left by her brother’s absence. Director Berger also likes to play with outlandish imagery – tossing unearthly lights on children playing as if in outer space, throwing kaleidoscopic views in one scene, swirling blood around in orgasmic confusion in another. Even a group of children pounding on a green port-a-potty pushes the viewer into her uneasy world.

It’s an intimate portrayal of a family at issue with itself. How do you deal with a father who is an easy-going, playful guy one moment, but then a vodka-laced beast the next? The film balances his journey into escapist drinking with that of his son, Anton, as he partakes in a strange, imagined journey in outer space.

The film’s fantasy elements definitely surround Anton and his space journey. As he communicates with his siblings, the video image gains digital signal degradation as he drifts about in response to the whimsical Saturn-bound space opera his sisters prepared for him.

Loosely translating the filmmaker’s treatise on her film, there is a great deal of existential theory to absorb: Progression of the thought, regression of the soul, and the beauty of the organic, of the body, of matter, and of the inner yearning, wanting, yearning life within matter.

Entanglement, the latest film by director Jason James, follows the story of Ben Layten (Thomas Middleditch) after he discovers that he nearly had an adopted sister: his parents abandoned their plan to adopt a child after learning that they had him. Ben searches for, and begins to fall in love with, Hanna (Jess Weixler), an event that makes his life more complicated. James is an award winning producer, writer, and director based in Vancouver and Los Angeles. He recently directed and produced The Burning Feeling (starring John Cho, Tyler Labine, and Paulo Costanzo), which earned Best Feature at the Vancouver International Film Festival. The film was released in North America by eOne Films and Search Engine Films in 2014.

Entanglement is in theatres and on demand/digital HD beginning 9 February.

What attracted you to this project?

When this script first came to my desk, I was going through a strange period in my personal life. At 35, my mother had just told me who my real father was. I think we all tell ourselves stories about who we are and where we come from. We might identify with a certain cultural heritage, tradition, or place as a result. For me, I fully believed that I had become the person I was, based on education, geography, and perhaps the people I surrounded myself with. But then you meet someone who is your flesh and blood, that you have never met before, and you start to see similarities. The whole idea of nature vs nurture comes into question. There was this nagging feeling or question about what my life might have been like if I had met this person sooner. So, there was a parallel with Ben’s journey in Entanglement that really spoke to me. Beyond that, it was a beautifully written script by Jason Filiatrault that was funny and fragile and completely engaging. I was struck by how visceral and imaginative and weird it was.

What were some of the challenges?

The biggest challenge in Entanglement – for me – was making the unreal real. In the script, Ben is having a breakdown, to the point that he is hearing and seeing things. I wanted to find the real world version of this – so I met with a psychologist who read the script and diagnosed this character with schizo-affective disorder, bi-polar sub-type. We talked a lot about the mental affects of this disease and the physical attributes associated with patients as well as the drugs that are prescribed and their various side-affects. I wanted to make Ben’s disorder as honest, real, and grounded as possible – and juxtapose this fantastical, strange, and beautiful perspective on the world.

Was there anything that you had planned to do but couldn’t?

The hardest scene to shoot was also my favourite. In the film, there are three different underwater sequences. I had never done an underwater shoot before – so I storyboarded out all the shots. We allowed half a day to capture about 16 different shots. When it took approximately two hours to get the first shot, I realized there was no way I could get everything I wanted in that time frame, so I just had to improvise. There was an underwater speaker – where the actors could hear me giving directions like “swim to camera” or “dive deeper.” They were amazing, such good sports, and the footage looks incredible. I should also add that Thomas Middleditch can hold his breathe for an inhuman amount of time.

How did the screenplay develop during production?

Jason (Filiatrault) and I developed this script for about two years together before we went into production. For me, the script is a document that is constantly evolving and changing – based on actors that are cast, locations that are found, and new ideas that emerge throughout that process. That said, Jason is an amazing writer and he created a script that was so fragile and funny – I felt like I had to elevate the execution to match this weird fever dream of a script.

What was it like shooting in Vancouver?

Vancouver is an amazing place to make films – I have shot all of my films here. Our crews generally work on Hollywood service productions and become very talented and well trained. When I have a small indie – like Entanglement – I’m able to get really amazing technicians and cast that really help to elevate the material.

So much of the film is about whether we should let things go. How do you create sympathy for Ben without making it frustrating for us?

I think all of us have been Ben at one point or another in our lives, when we are at a crossroads and feeling a bit directionless, hopeless. Thomas does a good job of creating empathy and understanding for a person in this position. I also think that the film tries to find the lightness within this darkness.

For me, Entanglement is about seeing the beauty in the world, discovering meaning in the simplest of things, and finding the light in even the worst situations, because if we didn’t laugh at these things, we’d probably just decide to end it all.

The cast is consistently strong. Tell us about the casting.

Thomas was the first person we went out to for this role. When I’m casting a film I always like to watch interviews with actors – to see who they are innately as people – and to see if there is a little bit of this character in them.

I remember watching an interview with Thomas at the Sundance Film Festival where he was asked what his favourite song was. He started describing Neutral Milk Hotel’s “The King of Carrot Flowers” and he started crying, and I remember thinking that is just perfect for this role. This guy is so emotionally fragile that he might just breakdown and laugh, or cry.

And working with Thomas was a dream – he holds such a high bar and wants to make cool stuff. We were constantly re-working the material and trying new ideas all along the way, right before scenes and in the moment. It was a really raw and exciting way to work.

Thomas, Jess, Diana, and I did get to do a few rehearsals before the shoot, which is rare. I think the big thing for all of us was to get the tone right, making sure all of these characters belong in the same film, and throughout the production, making it as relaxed and comfortable as possible – allowing casual mistakes and improvised moments to become a part of the construction of the film.

What is next for you?

I am currently casting a road movie called The Mother Outlaws. I’m also developing an all female heist comedy called Bad Seeds with Amber Ripley (producer of Entanglement) and Jason Filiatrault.

Tom Ue was educated at Linacre College, University of Oxford, and at University College London, where he has worked from 2011 to 2016. His PhD examined Shakespeare’s influence on the writing of George Gissing. Ue has held visiting fellowships at Indiana University, Yale University, and the University of Toronto Scarborough, and he was the 2011 Cameron Hollyer Memorial Lecturer. He has published widely on Gissing, Conan Doyle, E. W. Hornung, and their contemporaries. Ue is the Frederick Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Toronto Scarborough and an Honorary Research Associate at University College London.

Among the most impressive film restorations of 2017 was Marcel Pagnol’s Marseille Trilogy (1931-36), which I reviewed last March when Janus Films screened it theatrically in select US cities. Those not fortunate enough to live near such splendid art-house and independent film venues as the Film Forum in New York and the Landmark Theatres’ Ritz at the Bourse Cinema in Philadelphia now have the opportunity to see this landmark French film trilogy on Blu-ray and DVD from the Criterion Collection. The company has produced one of its most essential releases, which, hopefully, will further rectify the critical reputation of Pagnol. Once viewed as an “uncinematic” filmmaker only interested in obtaining a larger audience for his stage plays, Pagnol was instead an important innovator, whose films paved the way for Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave due to his commitment to shooting in natural locations during the early sound era of the 1930s. More importantly, Pagnol’s affection for the colorful working-class people of the port city of Marseille demonstrates his deserved place alongside Jean Renoir as one of France’s great humanist filmmakers.

Criterion’s box set features the three installments, Marius (Alexander Korda, 1931), Fanny (Marc Allégret, 1932), and César (Marcel Pagnol, 1936) with the same gorgeous 4K digital prints and uncompressed monaural soundtracks from the theatrical reissue, which were painstakingly restored by La Compagnie Méditerranéenne de Film, MPC, and La Cinémathèque Française. Since I critiqued both the films and prints in my prior review, I will instead focus this follow-up discussion exclusively on the wealth of welcome supplements that Criterion has culled together for their three-disc Blu-ray release (a four-disc DVD set is also available).

The supplements for the first disc of Marius commence with a useful 19-minute introduction to the trilogy by Bertrand Tavernier. The French filmmaker discusses how he first encountered the films of Pagnol and his equally maligned contemporary Sacha Guitry through the film criticism of François Truffaut. Despite the fact that Pagnol and Guitry were roundly disparaged by post-World War II French film critics for possessing directing styles that were fueled more by theatrical traditions than cinematic ones, Tavernier acknowledges that Truffaut was an ardent admirer of their films, which he felt were technically very “modern” and “innovative.” Yet despite the support of Truffaut, he explains that the poor-quality prints of the Marseille Trilogy that used to circulate only reinforced the misconception that Pagnol was uninterested in visual storytelling. Tavernier admits that his recent viewing of the restoration was a revelation, but, at the same time, points out that he already understood there was more to Pagnol than many realized due to having previously seen his experimental use of natural locations and direct sound in his other early sound films, notably the poignant Angèle (1934, featuring Orane Demazis, who again entered into “Fanny” territory by playing an unwed country girl forced to become a Parisian prostitute after becoming pregnant).

Tavernier discusses the unconventional filmmaking methods of Pagnol, particularly his practice of sometimes listening to film takes in the sound truck as they were being shot. “He had the attitude that if it is good when you hear it, it will be good when you see it,” Tavernier states. “If there is nothing wrong in the way that people are delivering the lines, if the beats are right, and the rhythm is okay, that meant that the take is good.” Admittedly, this anecdote, on the surface, appears to validate the popular notion that Pagnol was disinterested in the visual nature of the cinema, but instead, as Tavernier stresses, his remarkable aural instincts enabled him to make the correct choice more often than not. Pagnol was not alone in using this unorthodox technique, since, as Hollywood actress Alexis Smith once revealed to Tavernier, Raoul Walsh also possessed similar faith in sound and occasionally would turn his back to the camera and listen to takes during the shooting of the boxing biopic Gentleman Jim (1942).

The first disc continues with a heartfelt 29-minute interview with Pagnol’s grandson Nicolas Pagnol, who, in part, funded the restoration through an online campaign on the crowdfunding website Ulule in 2014. He notes how the controlled use of lighting in Marius was due to the direction of Alexander Korda. However, despite his grandfather’s fondness for his famed Hungarian-born collaborator, Pagnol desired more control over his films and, as they progressed, he employed a freer style of direction. His own films possessed more location shooting and put greater emphasis on the emotion elicited from the actors through their dialogue than pictorial precision.

The supplements on this disc conclude with a fascinating 30-minute video essay by Brett Bowles, an associate professor of French at Indiana University, Bloomington, which analyzes how the broad appeal of the trilogy was, in part, due to Pagnol’s ability to bridge both the class and ideological divides of 1930s France through his employment of a more socially optimistic variation of poetic realism. While Marius, Fanny, and César paralleled poetic realist films such as Pépé le moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937) and Le Quai des brumes/Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné, 1938) by focusing on class tension and characters whose fates are heavily determined by social forces beyond their control, Bowles observes how Pagnol (particularly in Fanny and César, the two films where he possessed the most artistic control) eschewed poetic realism’s fatalistic endings and dark visual style. “In direct contrast to the dark, fatalistic poetic realism of [Jean] Renoir, Duvivier, and Carné, Pagnol’s poetic realism is a sunny cinema of reconciliation that dramatizes the healing and social reintegration of angry, isolated, suffering individuals through comedy, friendship, and the richly performative use of language,” Bowles argues. This intriguing thesis is more fully explored in his perceptive monograph Marcel Pagnol (Manchester University Press, 2012), which is highly-recommended to those interested in the dramatist-filmmaker’s career.

Fanny (1932)

The second disc of Fanny possesses one of the box set’s finest gems: segments from the six-part French television documentary Marcel Pagnol: Morceaux choisis/Marcel Pagnol: Choice Excerpts (Georges Folgoas, 1973). Veteran television presenter Pierre Tchernia (the director of the French comedies Le viager/The Annuity, 1972 and Les gaspards/The Down-in-the-Hole Gang, 1974) conducts an in-depth and engaging interview with Pagnol about his early years in theatre and film. Quite charming and affable throughout their discussion, Pagnol discusses how he became fascinated with the cinema in 1930 after French actor Pierre Blanchar recommended that he travel to London to see an early “talkie” featuring Hollywood actress Bessie Love (presumably Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Oscar-winning musical The Broadway Melody, Harry Beaumont, 1929). Despite finding the film’s use of sound primitive, he saw it three times and immediately became convinced that “talkies” posed a serious threat to the future of theatre. The following year, he collaborated with Korda on the film version of Marius. Reminiscent of the mutual respect shared by director Joseph Losey and dramatist-screenwriter Harold Pinter on their long-term collaboration on The Servant (1963), Accident (1967), and The Go-Between (1970), Pagnol attests to the reciprocal nature of their working relationship. While Pagnol taught the silent cinema veteran Korda how to best utilize talking actors, Korda taught the filmmaking novice the visual language of the medium. The resulting film (shot simultaneously in separate French, German, and Swedish-language versions) was such an international success that, according to producer André Daven in his onscreen interview, it helped bail its American financier, Paramount Pictures, out of financial difficulties stemming from the Great Depression.

Other onscreen interviewees in these segments include theatre critic Jean-Jacques Gautier, studio painter Pierre Ambrogiani, publicity executive Antoine Toé, and esteemed director René Clair, who, quite interestingly, admits his admiration for Pagnol’s film La femme du boulanger/The Baker’s Wife (1938) despite their well-publicized disagreement about the use of sound film to capture theatre on film. Difficult to see in its entirety in the United States (PAL video copies of five of the six episodes are available at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris), Criterion has included all of the third episode and a 27-minute extract from the fourth episode. If any additional Pagnol films are released by Criterion in the future, the company should strongly consider including the entire documentary as a bonus disc, since it is an invaluable look at his body of work.

The third disc includes the final film, César and a trio of archival interviews with members of the trilogy’s stellar cast. The first of these is a 3-minute interview with French Algerian-born actress Orane Demazis, which aired on French television on March 30, 1967. At the time, she was fresh off having co-starred with Macha Méril and Patrick Jouané in the romantic drama Au pan coupé/Wall Engravings (Guy Gilles, 1968). Demazis admits having become frustrated with how the character of Fanny “pigeonholed” her, particularly given that she played other types of roles both prior to and following the trilogy. She amusingly recalls her legendary co-star Raimu as a “spontaneous…complete performer” with a penchant for yelling obscenities on the set. At first frightened by his frequent outbursts, she eventually gave him his comeuppance by compiling a list of some of his choicest expressions and hurled them back at him in front of the cast and crew. Another tribute to Raimu is provided by Pierre Fresnay, who, in a 6-minute interview from a September 25, 1956 episode of the French television series Cinépanorama, offers a more textured portrait of the actor. Although Fresnay admits that their relationship was merely a professional one, he sensed Raimu to be a complex and contradictory man, who, in his view, adopted a loud and boisterous personality to mask a shyness stemming from an unhappy childhood.

César (1936)

The third and final interview is a 10-minute discussion with character actor Robert Vattier, a regular member of Pagnol’s stock company, from an April 20, 1976 television profile of his career. The veteran stage and film performer is refreshingly modest and good humored about his career and stresses that he would not have wished to become a bigger star if it meant that he had to work harder. While having performed in plays by esteemed French dramatists such as Jean Anouilh and André Roussin, Vattier notes that his supporting role as the comic foil Monsieur Brun in Pagnol’s trilogy gave him a public recognition that frequently alludes character performers.

However, the highlight of disc three is the rare 12-minute short Marseille (1935). Produced by Pagnol and directed by Jean Monti and Jean Margueritte, the film is a beautiful example of the documentaire romancé (documentary romance), a pre-World War II French subgenre of the documentary that synthesized fictional storytelling elements within the traditional narrative structure of the travelogue. Made when the sights and customs of Marseille from the prior century were fading away (an idea foregrounded by the climactic shot of a modern steamship dissolving into a well-worn sailing ship from the past), the film presents romanticized imagery of the port city, notably the multiple shots of hardworking fishermen, dancing lovers, and sweeping shots of the harbor, which is overlooked from above by the Notre-Dame de la Garde (a nineteenth-century Catholic basilica described in writer Arno-Charles Brun’s narration as the “patron saint of sailors”).

This evocative imagery in Marseille is accompanied by a pair of musical interludes featuring ballads by cabaret singers Mado Stelli, who subsequently appeared opposite Raimu and another of France’s top comedic stars, Fernandel in director Pierre Colombier’s boxing farce Les rois du sport (1937); and Tino Rossi, the Corsican-born crooner and popular star of such French films as Marinella (Pierre Caron, 1936), Destins (Richard Pottier, 1946), and Pagnol’s La belle meunière/The Pretty Miller Girl (1949, as Austrian composer Franz Schubert). The disc concludes with a 2½-minute segment covering the trilogy’s digital restoration, which, although not terribly informative, provides a brief glimpse into the effort to bring the visual and aural splendor of Pagnol’s masterpiece back to life.

The box set is handsomely packaged with elegant, gold-tinted artwork by the Italian-born cartoonist and illustrator Manuele Fior, whose award-winning 2009 graphic novel 5,000 Kilometers Per Second (published in English by Fantagraphics in 2016), like the Marseille Trilogy, also tells the heartbreaking tale of two young lovers, Piero and Lucia, separated and reunited after many years apart. The discs are accompanied by a 56-page booklet containing cast and credits; production and behind-the-scenes stills; a well-articulated essay by film critic Michael Atkinson; and excerpts from the preface that Pagnol penned for a 1964 collection of his stage and screenplays.

Admittedly, the box set’s hefty $99.95 price tag may give some interested parties pause, but, unlike other sets that frequently pair acknowledged classics with less marketable films to recoup the financial costs of the latter, each installment of Pagnol’s trilogy is of equal merit and needs to be viewed as a whole to fully appreciate its brilliance.

Christopher Weedman is an Assistant Professor of Film and Pop Culture Studies in the Department of English at Middle Tennessee State University. His criticism and scholarship has appeared in Cinema Retro, Film International, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Senses of Cinema, and the edited anthology Fifty Hollywood Directors (Routledge, 2015). His article “A Dark Exilic Vision of Sixties Britain: Gothic Horror and Film Noir Pervading Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter’s The Servant” has been accepted for publication in Cinema Journal (forthcoming, 2019). He is currently writing a critical biography of British actress Anne Heywood, whose groundbreaking film performances in The Fox (Mark Rydell, 1967) and I Want What I Want (John Dexter, 1972) were among the first to sensitively explore such gender and sexual identity issues as bisexuality and transgenderism.

Rob Reiner is one of the most successful American directors working today. However, it’s difficult to pin him down to any particular genre or style of film making. He has made one of the greatest cult comedies of all time (This Is Spinal Tap, 1984), two of the best Stephen King adaptations (Stand By Me, 1988; Misery, 1990), a classic children’s fantasy movie (The Princess Bride, 1987), and two highlights of liberal social cinema (A Few Good Men, 1992; Ghosts of Mississippi, 1996) while cornering the market in romantic comedies (When Harry Met Sally, 1989; The American President, 1995; As Rumor Has It, 2005; And So It Goes, 2014).

Reiner has also acted in over 70 films and worked as a writer and producer. He is a partner in the film production company Castle Rock, which has produced all his films. With Movies part of the DNA of the Reiner family, his father, Carl Reiner, is also an actor, writer, producer, director. Even Rob Reiner’s mother made a name for herself just for uttering the one immortal line “I’ll have what she’s having” in When Harry Met Sally.

A glance a Reiner’s web profile shows him to be very politically active. He has actively campaigned for a number of democratic presidential candidates, considered running for California Governorship, is a co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, and much more. However, surprisingly his first overtly political film, LBJ, was only made in 2016. He has followed that a year later with Shock and Awe, based on the true story of a group of journalists trying to uncover the truth behind the “weapons of mass destruction” justification made by President Bush for going to war with Iraq.

Anyone who follows Reiner on Twitter knows that he is not, to put it mildly, a supporter of President Trump. This was very apparent when Film International sat with Reiner at the Dubai International Film Festival where Shock and Awe was being shown.

Your new film, Shock and Awe, highlights the role of press in uncovering the truth. What are your thoughts on the current state of press in the States?

To be honest with you, I’m scared. Presidents have always utilized propaganda to push a policy or reason for a war. This is the first time in American history where there is a big chunk of the press: Fox News, Sinclair outlets, Breitbart, doing a lot of heavy lifting for the president. You’ve got the mainstream media under attack. So there are pillars of American democracy that are starting to fray. We have a Congress which is unwilling to look at a president who, when he put his hand on The Bible, violated the Constitution of the United States of America; enriching himself from foreign countries. No president has done that with such abandon. And he’s right out there doing it. You’ve got a court system that he is trying to erode. The only world leaders he seems to like are authoritarians like Duterte, Erdogan and Putin. Germany and France and Great Britain, he trashes. So it’s a scary time.

It’s a great experiment this idea of democracy. American democracy started 241 years ago by people who were trying to find a new way of governing. Great civilizations last anything between 250 and 300 years. We are at 241. The question is: will we be able to survive? Now, Robert Mueller is doing his work trying to get to the bottom of all the coordination that Trump has done with the Russians and it’s all starting to come out. But, there is a tremendous effort right now to denigrate Mueller and the FBI and everything that we hold dear as our law enforcement. We’ve seen this in the past with dictators. The founding fathers put a system in place that was supposed to prevent dictators or royalty. We broke away from Great Britain because we did not want to be ruled by a king. We wanted the people to rule the country and have a say. This is the first time that those ideas are being tested in a big way. I know there are a lot of people out there who are fighting very hard to preserve what we have. What we have now are forces that we have never seen before in our history.

The American democracy survived a cold war with the Soviet Union. Soviet Union collapsed and America was the last remaining super power. Putin comes along and takes over this country when the collapse happens. Over a period of time, Putin has started a clandestine cyber war, that was undetectable at first. What he has done is that, in a very inexpensive way, is invading America. The thing that is scary about this is what I call “Stupid Watergate”. Because, in Watergate we had to figure out what was going on. Here, it’s right out there! They say what they have done. He is tweeting it! And we’re sitting here saying we’ve got to connect the dots. There is no connecting dots. It’s all one big dot! It’s there. You can see it. So it’s scary because we know collusion is taking place.

That is why, to me, Shock and Awe could be valuable. It’s about how the press fights so hard to get the truth out. There is one line we have in the film which, for me, is the most important line in the film. It says that when the government says something, a journalist has only one question to ask: is it true? That’s it. We all know that we were lied to in order to go to war in Iraq. It was all one big lie. And I, as someone who was drafted during the Vietnam War, never thought my country would go to war twice based on lies. Even though there were more people killed in the Vietnam War, to me Iraq was a greater foreign policy disaster, because of what it unleashed.

You cannot promote ideology at the point of a gun. If you believe that your democratic way of life is the best way of life, then go by example. And people will either say I like it or I don’t like it. But you can’t force somebody to accept your way of life. It doesn’t work. And that’s what we try to do.

We explain it in Shock and Awe. After we were the only remaining superpower, there were a bunch of guys called Neocons. They were mostly Jewish guys who had been liberals and they were saying: what is the best way to use this American power? So they said if we can create a western style democracy in other places, similar to what we have, that will proliferate. People will say: oh, that’s good. They were going after Iraq even before 9/11. It was all written in this Project for New American Century. It’s William Kristol and Richard Perle and Doug Feith and all these guys. They wrote this treatise saying: Iraq is the place to go! What kind of crazy thinking is that?! The whole point of the film is to show journalists have a place. You’ve got to keep fighting for the truth and not let the government run Russia over you.

You’ve been politically active all your life, being a very committed Democrat. But had shied away from making an overtly political film till LBJ in 2016.

The Princess Bride

Well, I made Ghosts of Mississippi which is all about race relations. I did American President and A Few Good Men which had political overtones. But overtly political, yes, LBJ was the first one and Shock and Awe is political as well.

Has it been due to lack of suitable material?

No, I think first of all you have to learn as you live and grow. You learn what you think of the world you live in and what you want to say about it. Then you can put it out there. I’ve done that in a couple of films and probably will do the same again, if they let me. But I’m afraid they’ll take the camera away from me!

There must be enough material now with this Russia business.

Oh, my God! This Russian thing is fascinating; what he’s been able to pull off.

Does cinema have a more important role now?

Yes. Cinema has always been important as a contributor to conversations and dialog. I don’t believe that cinema can magically change anything but it will always be part of the dialog. In particular, if you are going to make a fil that has historical impact, you have to do your homework and be accurate. Hopefully you will have something to say that people can talk about. Right now, there is a lot to talk about.

For me, the thing that runs through your films is that they are all character driven and with strong narrative. Are those what you look for in a film?

Yes. I am an actor and I come to directing as an actor. To me, the best and most interesting films are the ones that are character driven. The ones that have to do with human interaction and the human condition. So, I always look for those kinds of things.

Have you not thought about making another mockumentary? You invented that genre!

(Laughs) Yes, we invented it and a lot of people are doing it. Christopher Guest did a lot of them for our company, Castle Rock. He’s great at it.

Was there any scene in Spinal Tap that you really liked and didn’t make the final cut?

This is Spinal Tap

There was a scene where it took a long, long time to get the joke. If you notice in the film, there is a shot where one band member has a herpes sore on his lip and the camera pans to the other guy and he’s got a herpes sore too. We had a section of the film where there was a band called The Dose, that opened the film. They were like a punk band and it was headed by Cherie Currie who was in the rock band The Runaways. There was a scene where one of the band members was dating her and next thing he’s got the herpes sore. And then the other one is dating her and he’s got the thing. And then we had a scene where all five members of the band are sitting around having a band meeting. Four people have the thing and they are saying: maybe we should drop The Dose from the tour. The drummer, who is the only one who hasn’t got the thing says, “I like them, I think they’re cool, we should keep them!” It took a long time to tell that joke and we took it out. What has remained is two guys with the sore.

Which film is quoted to you more, When Harry Met Sally, Princess Bride, or This Is Spinal Tap?

RR: All of them! When Harry Met Sally because my mother says “I’ll have what she’s having!” Princess Bride: “Inconceivable!” and “My name is Inigo.” They say all these things.

Oh, I’ve got to tell you this great story about Spinal Tap. I was at a party years ago and Elon Musk (billionaire founder of Tesla cars) comes to the party and he’s got this new car. I had never seen a car like that. It was the first Tesla. He says it’s a new car which I’m putting out next year. He then says let me show you something. So, we get in the car and I sit down in the passenger seat. He turns the radio on and it goes to 11! I said wow! And he said I love the movie and this is in every Tesla. They all go up to 11!

With less than a month before we find out how many Academy Awards The Shape of Water will actually win, the short list of the shortest films are usually the last entries that most people, even critics, will catch before game night: Sunday, March 4th. Between those 15 movies and the foreign film finalists – usually one or two of which haven’t been released in theatres or on demand in the U.S.A. – those cineastes who hope to pick winners in all these four categories will probably revert to darts or pin-the-tail-on-the donkey scenarios for their selections.

Over the last several years, most of the short subjects have been compiled and shown in art house circuits. This year, courtesy of Landmark Theatres and Shorts International, the films have been broken into four programs. The 50 minutes of Animated Shorts has been buffed up with three additional items (tentatively Loan Property Office, Coin Operated, and Achoo), so viewers should get somewhere near 83 minutes of entertainment. The rest can be seen in Live Action Shorts and split programs for the Documentary Shorts.

DeKalb Elementary

The Live Action Shorts program runs about 97 minutes and is an international smorgasbord featuring two films from the United States, one represented the U.K., another from Germany, and one from Australia. DeKalb Elementary from L.A.-based director-writer Reed Van Dyk (who, like me, has a B.A. in Theater Arts from Cornell University). It’s a harrowing character piece that examines the unlikely relationship between a calm-under-fire elementary school receptionist (Tarra Riggs) and a mentally-unstable man (Bo Mitchell) who arrives at school with angry, confused intentions and a loaded rifle. My Nephew Emmett, which played at last year’s DC Shorts Film Festival, is a powerful, slow-reveal story from Kevin Wilson, Jr., about a Mississippi preacher (L.B. Williams) trying to protect his Chicago-born teenage nephew (Joshua Wright) from racist killers in August 1955. The somber production design and deliberately cautious camerawork effectively dramatizes the quiet moments leading up to the actual, infamous day in our nation’s past. On the lighter side is The Eleven O’Clock, an Australian comedy directed by Derin Seale and written by lead actor Josh Lawson (a.k.a. House of Lies’ oafish Doug Guggenheim), playing a Dr. Terry Phillips, psychiatrist with a new patient, Dr. Nathan Klein (Damon Herriman). One has a severe personality disorder, one doesn’t. The dialogue moves along briskly like an escalating “Who’s on First” routine. British entry The Silent Child, a sad affair, introduces Maisie Sly as Libby, a four-year-old deaf girl, in a family of frantic overachievers who basically ignore her. Joanne (Rachel Shenton), a newly installed speech therapist, makes an impact on the girl – all to the better – but Libby’s mother (Rachel Fielding) believes her daughter would be better off enhancing her lip reading rather than sign language skills. Actor Chris Overton’s first short film as an indie director spins a small story out of a family’s challenges to understand the people who live in a world without sound. Watu Wote – All of Us is a German film (the winner of the last year’s DC Shorts Audience Award) which tackles religious differences between Muslims and Christians in the border region between Kenya and Somalia, where Al-Shabaab terrorists attack a bus. A Christian woman (Adelyne Wairimu), scared and bitter over a personal tragedy, is protected by Muslim passengers when the vehicle is stopped by the militants. Julia Drache’s script is based on a true event from which director Katja Benrath has painted a strikingly immersive tale.

The two programs for the longish (29-40 minutes each) Documentary Shorts straddle both lighter and darker fare. There’s also the requisite HBO Documentary Film submission, Traffic Stop, from Peabody Award-winning Kate Davis (director) and David Heilbroner (producer). It’s might be the last time the retiring (from HBO) executive producer Sheila Nevins’s name adorns an Oscar contender. Under her watch, the HBO documentary unit has won an astounding 26 Academy Awards. The half-hour film premieres on the network on February 19th (with previews three days earlier on HBO NOW, HBO GO and HBO On Demand). It blends 2015 police dash cam footage showing the harrowing arrest in Austin of African-American math and dance teacher Breaion King, for a minor traffic violation, coupled with recent footage showing her resilience and determination to rise above the race issue invasive within some segments of law enforcement.

Edith+Eddie

On the lighter side, Frank Steifel’s Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405, is a poignant portrait of Brooklyn-born, Los Angles-raised, extraordinarily talented artist Mindy Alper, whose life has been a roller coaster of depression and mental disorder. With a backdrop of family mementos and home movies, Alper is the talking head who reveals a life (work, family, mental health) that has been hard. This fascinating film is a compassionate look at a transformative artist. (It’s available free at Indiewire!). Laura Checkoway’s Edith+Eddie is a love story for the ages. The titular duo, at ages 96 and 95, are the United States’ oldest interracial newlyweds. I remember the local news story a few years ago about them, bonding over a winning lottery ticket and getting hitched. And being saddened that Edith’s family put up such a noticeably ugly stink. This Kartemquin Films presentation takes that story a step further by showing how in sync the couple’s lives are, whether inserting their dentures in the morning, or doing daily exercises. For these young’uns, love is colorblind. For Edith’s daughter, it is a tragic call to arms.

From Netflix (where it has been streaming since September 12th) comes Peabody Award-winner Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s Heroin(e), a depressing/uplifting examination of Huntington, West Virginia’s attempt to deal with the opioid crisis. The epidemic has hit this once bustling industrial town hard, with overdoses at 10 times the national rate. This is a compassionate story showcasing Jan Rader, the local fire chief, Judge Patricia Keller, and Brown Bag Ministry’s Necia Freeman, as they collectively offer novel search-and-rescue solutions to the escalating problem. Thomas Lennon, the only director among this year’s short docs to have previously won an Oscar (2006, for The Blood of Yingzhou District) has his fourth nomination with Knife Skills, a bright, delectable fill of culinary delight that spotlights the opening of Edwins restaurant in Cleveland, Ohio. The twist in creating a professional, classic French cuisine destination in the state’s second largest city by restauranteur Brandon Chrostowski is with his unusual staff, made up of people recently released from prison. Few of the 80 recruits have any experience in the hospitality industry. The frantic pressure in the kitchen (with the camera in their faces), might cause some of these ex-cons to wonder how they stumbled into this place. The film follows several former inmates as they train in pressure-cooker chaos, while their first names, crimes, and sentence is flashed across the screen. Even Brandon was in their shoes once, for drug possession and evading arrest. In the intense span of six weeks, teaching these non-professionals the art of fine dining takes on a delightful, salivating urgency. While patrons dine on fine food, Brandon and his EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute are feeding hope to it staff. Très honorable. You’ll be real hungry after this passionate, socially-conscious morsel. While the food battle line proves too intense for some (and for all the successes, it’s real disheartening to see the few agonizing setbacks), but many end up being served fresh hope with a side of pride.

The best short films hook viewers, carry them through the story, and deliver a surprising finish. Animation is best when it is used to depict things that cannot quite happen in real life – especially when animation is used to do this in inventive ways. The five animated shorts competing for this year’s Academy Award are each satisfying for their clever narratives and visual storytelling. While four of the five nominees run under 7 minutes, all the films use the time they take to tell their story well. None of the competitors seem too long – and yes, even a five-minute short can feel endless if told badly.

The oddsmakers’ longshot in the category, Revolting Rhymes, is also the longest of the nominees. Clocking in at 30 minutes, this highly entertaining adaptation of Roald Dahl’s book is a revenge-filled tale told in couplets. For viewers of a certain age, it will be reminiscent of the old Fracture Fairy Tales segments from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Here a wolf (voiced by Dominic West) recounts the ill-fated encounters to his two nephews Rex (David Walliams) and Rolf (Rob Brydon) each had when they met Red Riding Hood (Rose Leslie). Of course, Snow White (Gemma Chan), Grandma, seven jockeys (dwarfs!), a wicked queen, and a magic mirror among other fairy tale favorites figure prominently in the story. Revolting Rhymes provides some charming visuals and chuckles as a Banker Pig keeps Red’s saving in a piggy bank, and the evil Miss Maclahose, a nasty, scheming queen, does something, well, revolting. This longer short is witty and clever, likely to amuse both children and adults. Alas, it won’t bring home the gold, much as it deserves to.

The Garden Party

Likewise, Garden Party, is a terrific short film that looks so realistic, viewers may need a minute to realize it is animated. In seven minutes, dozens of frogs explore an abandoned house. There are some indelible images, from a frog climbing across a window, to a large amphibian caught in a jar, or sticking its face in a pile of caviar. Garden Party is completely wordless but entirely captivating as the truth behind what is going on is slowly, but eventually revealed. If there were any justice at the Oscars, this short would win the prize.

Arguably the slightest entry is the melancholy short Negative Space. This French nominee uses stop-motion and showcases some nifty visual motifs – a road becomes a zipper, signaling a memory, or wave of clothes “wash” up and across a floor – as a son recalls the bond he had packing suitcases with and for his father. And even though the final punchline is obvious, this five-minute short is still quite touching.

Lou, this year’s Disney/Pixar entry, is a modest morality tale about bullying. The film does feature some creative images as a collection of playground toys are used to taunt the bully into being a better person. However, the short’s life lesson – sharing is caring – is not necessarily going to change minds no matter how well told. The best thing about the almost entirely wordless Lou is how the toys re-assemble themselves and use the playground equipment to beat the bully at his own game. This short isn’t terrible, just terribly mediocre, which is why it could pull an upset at the Oscars.

Dear Basketball

However, if that happens, Lou would have to beat this year’s hands-down favorite, Dear Basketball. A pen and ink style animated short, Dear Basketball features Kobe Bryant voicing his own poem announcing his retirement while also professing his lifelong love of the game. With vivid color swirling amid black-and-white backgrounds, the film describes how a 6-year-old Bryant fell in love with basketball as a child and gave his heart and played through his hurt to realize his dream of being on the Lakers. Images of the young and old Bryant playing side by side effectively convey the athlete’s lifelong devotion to the sport. The only flaw in director Glen Keane’s film is his insistence on having John Williams compose the syrupy, inspirational score that tugs too hard at the heartstrings. Bryant’s poignant voice-over does that perfectly well on its own. Nevertheless, Dear Basketball is a slam-dunk to win the Academy Award this year.

Because the five nominees run just under an hour, three additional films, Lost Property Office, Coin Operated, and Achoo, round out the program to 83 minutes. However, those films were not available for pre-screening.

Gary M. Kramer writes about film for Salon, Cineaste, Gay City News, Philadelphia Gay News, The San Francisco Bay Times, and Film International. He is the author of Independent Queer Cinema: Reviews and Interviews, and the co-editor of Directory of World Cinema: Argentina, Volumes 1 & 2.